AUSTIN, Tex. -- Alchemy Semiconductor Inc., a fabless semiconductor company here that is being spun off from Cadence Design Systems Inc., today announced a $15 million first round of venture capital financing.

The investors -- US Venture Partners, Austin Ventures, and Telos Ventures -- believe Alchemy has the lead on other companies in targeting the burgeoning Internet edge device market.

"Other companies are scrambling to adapt their technology to the spectrum of applications and devices in this marke. Alchemy already has that advantage," said Winston S. Fu, a partner with US Venture Partners who has joined Alchemy's board of directors.

Alchemy first product will be announced at the Embedded Processor Forum in San Jose in June.

Cadence provided seed money for the microprocessor design firm in 1999 when Alchemy Semiconductor was founded by several members of the former StrongARM design team. Thecompany licensed the 32-bit MPU architecture from MIPS Technologies Inc. to develop high performance, very low power, integrated systems-on-chip (see April 8, 1999 story).
After the spin out, Cadence will remain an Alchemy shareholder.

Alchemy's president and CEO is Eric Broockman, former vice president and general manager of the Network Division of Crystal Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Cirrus Logic Inc. based in Austin. Cirrus Logic had just moved its own headquarters to Austin from Fremont, Calif. (see April 27 story). Jim Clardy, an Alchemy board member, was co-founder and former CEO of Crystal Semiconductor.

"Eric Broockman has been a key figure in the semiconductor and networking industries for years," said Clardy. "His leadership leverages Alchemy's technology talent with strong management acumen to take the product to market," Clardy said.

"We are very proud of the company's ability to secure this financing," said Broockman, who holds eight patents and was a National Science Foundation Fellow. "It reflects on the technological and management strengths of the company that firms of such financial strength and market position believe in our product, our market and our ability to attract customers. We see a growing market in the edge of the network products, and our team has been working steadfastly to make a low power, high output chip to satisfy the requirements of this product arena."